Interplay Loses Rights to Fallout MMO

[Hungry Donner]

Bethesda has a sister-company that was founded for the purposes of making MMOs, Zenimax Online Studios.

Not seen you around since Euro-Morrowind and the even earlier days of the TES forums. Nice to see you still kicking around, HD.

Euro-Morrowind, that's a name that certainly takes me back. It's a shame they faded away eventually. Silver Dragon (Ogre something over there) gave me a new link once but it never worked for me . . . although by then things were pretty quiet outside the French section.

Well with Earthrise, they are converting it to F2P. The player base is apparently dismal in numbers, with a lot of clans leaving the game (a few do remain). There's also been tons of issues with the games major pvp.

I can't speak for the game exactly though. I never bought/played it, this is all just what I've gleamed from the few posts made on the forums.

That's sad to hear, although MMOs are a tough genre to succeed in. Well, at least in the West. I hope their agreement with Interplay doesn't leave them burned.

 

[JPArbiter]

YES!Score one for the little guys... who have enough money to throw at a problem so as to get their way!!!!

Honestly I find this disgusting as honestly without question the law was 100% on the side of interplay and basically this boils down to Interplay accepting 2 million dollars to give up the remaining right they had to their creation. (either because they knew they had jack shit in the MMO, or because they just could not keep the litigation going)

And the worst part of it is? the fact that the franchise is in damn near the worst hands humanly possible. (Why yes I love not being able to click my mouse on anything for fear of picking up another useless piece of pixelated garbage) So, bring on more copy pasta sequels! Hooray for supporting the rights of the publishers to make money, cause they use your money to do such worth while things!

/aneurysm

Edit: I would suggest correcting the byline as the Bethesda never had the rights to the MMO, so it is not possible for the MMO rights to return to them.

wow, there was so much wrong with that statement that I dunno where to begin.

1) the law was only about 50% on Interplay's side, that was why it went to court in the first place.

2) It may have been interplay who created fallout, but remember they sold that baby to Bethesda, and Bethesda re licensed the right to the MMO back to Interplay.

3)This whole lawsuit started cause Interplay was supposed to be developing the MMO, but could not get the money together and after two years had jack squat to show.

4) Remember that Fallout was a dead Franchise and Bethesda brought it back to the forefront, so I hardly think you can call it the worst hands possible.

5) Interplay's biggest blunder was that they tried to overreach, citing breach of contract on Bethesda's part, which would have allowed them to get the fallout rights back lock stock and barrel and get paid back royalties on Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Interplay was the money grabbing whore and had to be beat down. if they had stuck to "no we are totally working on the MMO." defense this might not have gone that far.

 

[x-machina]

I can't say that I'm surprised, that the larger company with deeper pockets won the lawsuit. But, I is a damn shame. Bethesda has done nothing but shit all over fallout since they got it.

 

[viranimus]

Ok more clarification.

A: The agreement was not ownership of the IP, it was a license of the IP and once Bethesda completed their 3 turns with the franchise it was set to return to Interplay. There was no relicensing because it was never a part of the deal. (unless you consider Bethesdas more recent attempts at Vaderizing) However oft a group who adores steam appreciation of the complex differences between licensing and ownership is unlikely to be understood.

B: If Interplay failed to comply with the terms of the agreement it puts them into breach of the agreement. However that would entitle Bethesda return on their money invested as in money, Not forcibly extracting rights of ownership on the IP. (though with Interplays financial situation it would pretty much be a certainty as they basically have nothing else of value to cover the debt)

C: Bethesda started their push for litigation long before Interplay was due to release the game. Bethesda initially claimed that interplay had nothing to indicate they would be able to meet the expected time line. Granted they ended up being correct, but even that is moot because Bethesda made the claim before the expected point of release. You cant claim Party A did not meet criteria X if Criteria X hasnt even happened yet. Interplay showed enough work to indicate it was complying, close enough and it was allowed to be continued on that delay, a delay that was also perpetuated by Bethesdas meddling.

D: Citing Bethesda is a good set of hands for the franchise to be in because they at least did something with it is like after 20 years of never being able to get a date telling your family you finally have a girlfriend only to bring her home where it takes your family all of 10 minutes to realize you brought a hooker home for dinner.

E: Interplay had no reason to try to get the IP rights back. They were set to return after 1 more released installment. Does it make sense to initiate litigation (that Bethesda initiated) to get back a property you are going to get back anyway? The only grab here was by Bethesda making an illegitimate claim to something they had no right to (ownership) and interfering in the agreement so as to help to ensure that interplay would not be able to retain focus on maintaining their end of the agreement. Putting Interplay into a compromised position, forcing them to accept unfavorable renegotiation of the arrangement which is exactly what occurred.

Granted the assessment that Interplay has the ability to avoid all this is very correct. They should have not accepted the deal, or any renegotiation of it and its been a downward slide of exploited loopholes ever since.

 

[duchaked]

well maybe Interplay can hope Bethesda will hire them to make an HD port of Fallout 1 and 2

 

[stickmangrit]

INTERPLAY SHOULD HAVE WON BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE BETHESDA. BETHESDA IS THE WORST POSSIBLE CHOICE FOR A FRANCHISE, BUT THE ORIGINALS ARE CRAP TOO SO THE ORIGINAL DEVS SHOULDN'T WORK ON THEM EITHER. I HAVE NO REASON TO EVEN BE IN THIS ARGUMENT, AND AM CLEARLY TROLLING, SO WHY IN BLUE PERFECT HELL ARE PEOPLE STILL RESPONDING TO ME?

 

[Hungry Donner]

Ok more clarification.
A: The agreement was not ownership of the IP, it was a license of the IP and once Bethesda completed their 3 turns with the franchise it was set to return to Interplay.

This was the original agreement between Interplay and Bethesda, but then Bethesda went back and purchased the IP outright. It is this second agreement that involved licensing the MMO rights back to Interplay, and it is this second agreement that resulted in the lawsuit.

 

[Gather]

Now to look forward to another WoW-styled Theme Park styled MMO in the world of Fallout!

Hurray innovation

 

[Hungry Donner]

Now to look forward to another WoW-styled Theme Park styled MMO in the world of Fallout!

Hurray innovation

It's unlikely Bethesda (or Zenimax Online Stuidos, rather) will be doing anything with this in the foreseeable future.

 

[Earthmonger]

Euro-Morrowind, that's a name that certainly takes me back. It's a shame they faded away eventually. Silver Dragon (Ogre something over there) gave me a new link once but it never worked for me . . . although by then things were pretty quiet outside the French section.

Euro-Morrowind expanded into Euro-RPG. Old timers like Dragonnnnn, Sir, Imperator, Shadow, etc, began fading away. And Gordon (N^G) got married to Dragon_Legacy, lost interest in the site, and that was the final nail in the coffin. Everyone moved on; community dead. No bad memories though.

I was Moraelyn at Euro and TES, back then.

 

[lRookiel]

The idea of a Fallout MMO always struck me as odd anyway. Why should a place that is essentially a low-populated wasteland become an MMO filled with a bunch of people? I think it would take away some of the atmosphere of the game.

Your right there. However a coop mode wouldn't go a miss in the game as long as it was done well.

like 4 players max so it didn't spoil the whole "Lone wanderer" thing it had going for it.

 

[Hungry Donner]

The idea of a Fallout MMO always struck me as odd anyway. Why should a place that is essentially a low-populated wasteland become an MMO filled with a bunch of people? I think it would take away some of the atmosphere of the game.

Your right there. However a coop mode wouldn't go a miss in the game as long as it was done well.

like 4 players max so it didn't spoil the whole "Lone wanderer" thing it had going for it.

I agree that co-op seems the better way to go. I think a Fallout MMO is possible while maintaining the wasteland feeling, although it would be tricky. An RPG/RTS hybrid might actually be the way to go - something that promotes protecting your encampment and raiding others rather than having adventuring groups clogging up the wastes.

It would be interesting if you could join a community and help it increase its defenses, secure trading partners, and deal with raiders (or become them). Perhaps set it up so a community has as few central NPCs and most others are nameless protectors, which increase or decrease to compensate for the active player population. It would be great to visit a town and have most inhabitants be actual people, but they'd be replaced with NPC guards and what not during lean hours so they aren't easy pickings to gamers in other time zones.

Euro-Morrowind expanded into Euro-RPG. Old timers like Dragonnnnn, Sir, Imperator, Shadow, etc, began fading away. And Gordon (N^G) got married to Dragon_Legacy, lost interest in the site, and that was the final nail in the coffin. Everyone moved on; community dead. No bad memories though.

I was Moraelyn at Euro and TES, back then.

I recognize that name

I was sad to hear that Dragonnnnn passed away. He was fun; we had a bit of a race to see who'd hit 5k posts first, which was difficult without being spammy. He won, although funny enough he set up an unintended tradition of me being third to all of the major posting milestones (I'm a few months away from being third to hit 50k).

I was unaware that N^G and Dragon_Legacy got married, that is very cool news. Shame the forum couldn't persevere when he moved up, but I'm not surprised that happened.

 

[samsonguy920]

Good. Fallout Online was just going to do damage to the series, and I hope it never sees the light of day again.

I wouldn't consider that set in stone. Bethesda might just be up to the challenge of making one of their franchises into an MMO. Whether it be Elder Scrolls or Fallout, time will tell.

 

[manaman]

Good. Fallout Online was just going to do damage to the series, and I hope it never sees the light of day again.

I don't know about that. I was pretty excited that it was going to be set in Seattle, that being practically my backyard and all.

 

[AstylahAthrys]

Your right there. However a coop mode wouldn't go a miss in the game as long as it was done well.

like 4 players max so it didn't spoil the whole "Lone wanderer" thing it had going for it.

That I can totally agree with. Co-op could work just fine in a game like Fallout (or Elder Scrolls.) Though the intention with Bethesda Game Studios is to keep it multiplayer-free, especially with Elder Scrolls, so I doubt any core games of the series will feature it any time soon, sadly.

 

[Hungry Donner]

Your right there. However a coop mode wouldn't go a miss in the game as long as it was done well.

like 4 players max so it didn't spoil the whole "Lone wanderer" thing it had going for it.

That I can totally agree with. Co-op could work just fine in a game like Fallout (or Elder Scrolls.) Though the intention with Bethesda Game Studios is to keep it multiplayer-free, especially with Elder Scrolls, so I doubt any core games of the series will feature it any time soon, sadly.

I don't think we'll see a multiplayer game by Bethesda Game Studios, but we might see something like this from one of their sister-companies. In fact we already have, The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey, developed by Vir2L, had (four player?) multiplayer.

If Zenimax Online Studios is making an Elder Scrolls MMORPG it means Bethesda is OK letting one of the other Zenimax developers work with their ip, while they continue with the core series. This makes a co-op game a distinct possibility . . . . although I certainly wouldn't expect anything in the next few years.